


The Walls of Sparta

by Maraceles



Category: 300 - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 02:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1626410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maraceles/pseuds/Maraceles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I don't dislike the Spartans.  But when I found out Ephialtes' background, I was fascinated.</p><p>Written for CasusFere</p>
    </blockquote>





	The Walls of Sparta

**Author's Note:**

> I don't dislike the Spartans. But when I found out Ephialtes' background, I was fascinated.
> 
> Written for CasusFere

 

 

 

 

_The brave Spartans, defenders of Greece..._

* * *

There used to be laughter in the house, but there is only silence now.

She nails a peg into the side of her hut. It is falling apart and hard to repair, but she asks for no help. Like her people, she is too afraid; she fits too well in her dog-skin hat, servile and cowering as she is.

She would have asked her husband to do it, but he left to fight in the war. Her son she will not think of; it makes her hate her husband's memory.

She does not know.

* * *

_The traitor, Ephialtes, son of our most reviled--who dares to call them Spartans now? Breeding weakness in our race..._

* * *

She does not understand why they took him as their own.

Perhaps it is their way--the masters took her, after all. Her house, she is sure, is in disrepair after all these months, but it wasn't much to start with. That was the state of life the masters imposed.

She has heard the clandestine stories from clandestine friends, that before the massacres, things had been different. That once the huts had been beautiful houses, just like the northerners', and her people had lived together as great nations and neighbors. They were not always farmers whose only possession was a land truly not their own. Her own people had been civilized, once upon a time.

The masters took that away, just like they took her away.

Maybe it wasn't so odd that they stole him, too.

* * *

_Now I know why the Spartans do not fear death..._

* * *

There is happiness here.

It was no hardship, at first. The masters are wealthy--how could they not be, scavengers of the land as they are? They posses clothing and food. Unlike her life on the fields, she does not go hungry.  


Friendships are abundant in this place; many of her people's womenfolk reside in the city. It has been a long time since she has been around people. In the fields, they are kept 'a house apart;' it is a tenet of their existence. They know: Not forty in a crowd of thousands may be of their kind. They are a marked and forbidden race.

Despite the ease, it is difficult at times. She hears them in their councils, discussing her people. It is hard, hearing about the massacres; she hopes they will refrain this year. There was once a time when her people would revolt, but those times are long past. For all that her masters are scavengers, they posses military might. It would not do to displease them.

She would like to have a place in life, to be true to those that are wise, but that is the hardest. She does not want to admire her captors. She sees her new friends fawn over the kindest of them, and she understands why that is so. Some masters give rest, and sweets, and fair punishments. Still, it galls her. She was not raised to this life; she retains some of her freedom.

Still, being around her people makes her happy.

It helps defeat the worry. There is a new rumor about, and a fellow looks dazed, struck, though there are no bruises. She has heard that it is a usual practice, but she will not think on it. The masters are too few; her people outlive them seven to one. It is a danger, but also a distant hope: Her people grow larger as the masters shrink. Perhaps one day, they will breed themselves away.

* * *

_Only a Spartan woman gives birth to real men!_

* * *

Her child is not her own.

Her new husband, he wore the plume of a soldier once. He 'won' that plume the same way the others did, death and destruction on his hands. The poem--it says a wolf was killed to make them men. Her son would say differently.

She has lived among them, and now she sees: They are cowards, the lot of them. Even she, former wife of a traitor, knows that there is no glory in the death of a helot, in the death of a slave.

Her new son, now, is the son of the masters. She will not allow him to become his brother's killer. As she bathes him in wine, she knows they won't know enough to mourn him.

* * *

_All Greeks know what is right, but only the Spartans do it._

* * *

She has learned the truth.

Her first husband, she initially thought, had joined the masters. He marched out and had not returned, he died with his oppressors. His friends were forced to the fight just as he was but--Persia! Blessed Persia!--they had run, they had fled and joined the liberators. They were free; she could imagine them with gold and silver, bronze and myrrh.

Her husband, though--she never knew. She always thought he joined them: Joined those who ceremonially flogged her people. Joined those who made them drink dangerous wine, who humiliated them in front of their children. She thought he had fought for her son's killers.

She hears a different story, now. Though they call him leper, though they call him deformed--they lie, even in the smallest of things--they have told her an important detail.

Her first husband, the one she loved, had killed 300 of them by his 'treachery.'

She does not smile when she hears.

* * *

_Tonight we dine in Hell!_

* * *

The northerners come.

"Athenians," she hears them mutter, disgust and, yes!, fear in their voices. The stories, with their men of honor and bravery, have become a curse; the Spartans fail their father heroes. They never knew--they think they have fallen, when in truth, they were never on high.

She is old now, wrinkles line her face and age spots her hands. Her smile is cracked and ancient, but unlike the many years between today and her youth, it is no longer false.

* * *

_The gods mourn--this honorable world comes to an end._

 

 

 


End file.
